Page 71

EMORY

B y some miracle, I make it to my mom’s house unscathed. She takes one look at me and ushers me to the couch. Gloria brings me tea and calls Leo, who shows up thirty minutes later and tucks himself into the couch next to me.

I stare out the window, the mug of tea cooling between my palms.

“It’s raining now,” I say.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Leo asks gently.

I lift one shoulder. Everything inside me is numb. “There’s nothing to say. I fell in love with him, but sometimes love isn’t enough. We divorced. The end.”

I catch his wince out of the corner of my eye, before I tuck my face into the back of the couch.

“I think he loved you too, Em.” Leo’s hand squeezes my leg.

I try for a smile, but it comes out mangled based on his horrified expression. “It doesn’t matter, Leo.”

“Of course it matters,” my mom adds. “Don’t give up on him.”

Gloria nods. “He loves you. Go back there and talk to him.”

Panic flutters inside me at the thought of showing up at Crownhaven.

Gloria would. Gloria is tough. I shake my head.

“I put myself out there. More than I ever did with Harrison. I showed Aiden all my soft parts.” My voice cracks, and I swallow.

My mom’s lips are pressed together. “It wasn’t enough.

” I look back down at the blanket, tracing patterns in the velvet.

“It’s for the best,” I say softly. “It wouldn’t have worked. ”

“I disagree.”

My head jerks up. “Dad?”

My father is in the doorway, shaking off the rain and slipping off his boots. “Your mother invited me.”

“Mom,” I groan, and she laughs softly. “I had to. Needed the whole family here for this. It’s not every day your baby finds love.”

“Mom, for the last time, he doesn’t love me.”

“Oh, I think he does.” Leo’s voice is awed. My gaze flicks to him. He’s watching something on his phone. “Look.”

“Leo, come on—”

“Look.” He turns up the volume and passes me the phone. My parents crowd around. I don’t see much, but then there’s a flash of light, and Aiden appears in the rain-soaked dark. Shouting starts. Cameras flash, and then he appears fully lit in the light of some paparazzi’s video camera.

“This on?” he growls.

“Yes,” a voice off camera says.

A caption appears. Prince Heir gives up fortune.

My stomach bottoms out.

“This is a message for my wife,” he says, deliciously dark and low. His voice rubs over me like a heated blanket. “I will find you. Don’t run.”

“Who is your wife?”

His lips lift. “Emory Hunter,” he says, his gaze going soft for a moment before he refocuses. “To my family,” he adds, his voice gone harsh. “I’m renouncing all of it. I’m done. I choose her. Emory, over everything.”

I start to shiver before he finishes the sentence.

“She is mine, and anyone who interferes or insults her will face my wrath.” His voice is a mere rumble of warning at the end.

Leo breathes out something that sounds like holy shit .

Aiden turns, his strides angry and purposeful.

“What did she do to get you to fall in love with her?” the paparazzi shouts.

Aiden turns, his eyes gleaming, lit by some inner spark.

“Nothing,” he says. “All she had to do was be herself.”

The video cuts out. I stare at the screen and the comments scrolling over it. They range from incredulous to comical, but the general consensus seems to be that I shouldn’t have run and that hundreds of people are willing to take my place if I do.

I raise my head and meet the shocked gazes of my parents.

He loves me.

I know what it cost him to do this.

My whole body squeezes, with elation, with panic, with nerves, with the feeling that I might burst. I feel like a sparkler or a shaken-up bottle of champagne.

Aiden. Aiden over everything.

I smile through the tears that spring to my eyes.

He didn’t stutter once.

I pace in my childhood bedroom while the phone rings.

“Tristan Prince.” He sounds out of breath when he finally picks up, and my body sags.

“Tristan.” My voice trembles. “I fucked up.”

“Emory.” I hear the relief in his voice. “Where are you?”

I ignore his question and take a shaky breath. I want to claim Aiden the way he claimed me. My thoughts are racing, and I force myself to focus on getting what I need. “Tristan, I need your help.”

When we’re done, I make my way downstairs on adrenaline-weak legs to find my parents in the dining room with Gloria and Leo, sipping from mugs of tea. Everyone looks at me expectantly, even my father, who is normally first to speak.

“Dad.” I fist my hands in my dress.

“Em,” he says, smiling slightly.

“Why are you smiling?” My glance flicks to my mom, who is also fighting a smile.

“It’s not every day you get a son-in-law,” she says, before blowing on her tea.

“A son-in-law?”

“Your mother was just telling me about your dinner with Aiden.” My father rubs a hand over his balding head. “We’ll accept him. If you, ah, want him.” My father is pink at all the discussion of emotions, something he stoically avoids.

I freeze, my pulse hurrying in my throat, my gaze flicking between my parents.

“A Prince,” I say slowly. “You’d accept a Prince?”

My dad looks sheepish. “Emory, he just offered to give up his whole family for you. The way we’ve behaved seems…” He winces. “Incredibly petty in comparison.”

Gloria snorts, and my mom elbows her.

“I reviewed the plans in detail,” he continues.

My stomach tumbles. “Did you—”

“Let me finish, Em,” he says gently. “I noticed that you gave us each houses on it. Where did you get that idea?”

Hope bursts in my heart. “From Crownhaven.” I can’t help my small smile. “The Prince family is so much stronger because they all live there. I mean, I know Leo would hate it, but I think it could be good for us too.”

Leo grins at me and I smile back. He demanded a giant pool in the design for his home and space for extra sports cars.

“I agree,” my dad says slowly. “But I noticed you didn’t put one there for yourself.”

“I didn’t?” I frown, thinking back to the night I directed the architect to change the plans.

It was after we visited the secret garden.

After Aiden asked me to make whiskey with him.

My throat tightens. I remember what I was thinking.

I was daydreaming, about building a life with Aiden, about making a business together and following dreams down winding garden paths and seeing where they might lead.

I look away from my dad’s knowing eyes. “I was thinking about Aiden. I must have forgotten.”

“You can have it all, Em,” my mom says gently.

My dad nods.

“I can’t, though,” I say, fighting against the emotions clogging my throat. “All I’ve ever wanted is to be good enough. To be like Benny and be a brilliant strategist, or Andreas and be ruthless. Or Leo who is smarter than both of them and still manages to be charming on top of that.”

“Sweetie, no,” my mom breathes, but my dad just looks confused.

I take shallow breaths, trying to keep the emotions from bursting out of me, trying to keep my walls up and my heart protected.

“Why?” my father asks.

It’s the genuine confusion on his face that does me in.

“Because you like them better,” I burst out.

His eyes flare. My own are blurred with tears.

“I’ve always wanted to be exactly like them because they got to be close to you.

They were the ones you taught about the business.

They were the ones you groomed to be next in line.

Not me.” My voice sounds watery, but I force myself to continue.

“I’ve never been enough, and I’ve been trying so hard to be. ”

I press my hands to my eyes, and seconds later, my dad’s arms come around my shoulders.

“That’s not true, Emory,” he says, his grip and his words firm and warm.

“You are enough. You’re special. You always have been.

You could run the business better than either of your brothers, but I never wanted you to give up the goals you had as a little girl just to please us.

You were so dreamy and sweet as a kid. I never wanted you to lose that.

I never wanted the world to harden you or worse, make you feel like you had to harden yourself. ”

I press my face to his chest, soaking in his words. “I don’t feel that way with Aiden.” The words are dragged up from inside me, and my dad pulls back to look at my face.

“That’s good,” he says, his mouth pulling up. “That’s good because then I don’t have to kill him.”

Gloria mutters something that sounds like “The shotgun is already oiled.”

I laugh through my tears. “I want to keep him, dad. I don’t want to let him go. I like who I am with him.” Something warm and sweet unfurls in my chest. “I want to see if I can build something with him. Or do something just for myself.”

I’ve been scared up until now, but with Aiden supporting me, it feels like I can’t fail. Or if I do, he’ll be there to catch me.

“Go get your man,” my mom whispers as her arms come around me from the back.

It’s not raining when I get to the dock, but by the time I have the power on and the lights on, the rain is back. It sluices over my face and into my mouth as I wait at the bow for Aiden.

I tap my fingers on my stomach where my arms are crossed, and I shiver under the soaked silk of the dress.

What if he doesn’t come? The thought churns up from inside me, from the darkest parts of me that whisper that I’m not enough, that letting down my walls was a mistake.

He’ll come . The part of me that knows Aiden knows he’ll be here.

Don’t run. His voice was low and rough with intention when he spoke, his eyes gleaming with that spark he says is out.

The dark claiming the docks is absolute, and after twenty minutes, I’m trembling in the cold.

Where are you, Aiden?

Tristan said he’d be here.

I scan the dark again. There.

A shape under the lamp on the path, then a break in the rain as he appears at the bottom of the walkway. He tips his head up to look at the boat. His cheekbones catch the light, then his eyes, gleaming some feral animal in the dark.

Don’t run . I shiver again.

“You’re ruining my grand gesture,” he says. His voice carries even through the rain, the velvet of it stroking my skin.

“ Your grand gesture?” I want to laugh at the absurdity, but the emotions tangling in my throat don’t let the sound emerge.

Hope.

Anger that he signed.

Anger at myself for running.

But most of all, love for him and the arrogant way he stands like he owns the world, the smirk curling his lips when the light catches his face, the secret amusement in the tilt of his head— every gesture an unspoken language between us. The emotion bursts inside of me like a star. Love.

Love is knowing what he’s thinking before he says it.

Love is wanting to fight for him so fiercely that I tremble with the need to make him see that I can make a grand gesture too.

Love is the way my fingers curl around the railing to keep myself from running at him, because I’m terrified I left him alone in his hardest moment.

The words fill my chest like a balloon is inflating inside me.

Aiden.

Aiden over everything.